Behind China's Great Firewall 148
DigitalDame2 writes "In light of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, more scrutiny is being placed on China's Web-filtering practices. In May, China's technology minister, Wan Gang, told Reuters China he would 'guarantee as much [access] as possible,' defending Web limitations as necessary to protect the country's citizens. Truly understanding this cat-and-mouse game means taking a close look at what exactly the government filters out, how the Great Firewall works, and how others have found ways around it."
Firewall tech (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Firewall tech (Score:5, Interesting)
For starters if a country has 50% muslims, you can assume it filters the internet.
If a country is not free in speech (and that qualifies quite a bit more countries than you'd think, including all European countries), then they have either ISP or judicial filters, that in practice means their isp's filter.
Even Canada, matter-of-factly has ISP filters. Let's FIRST fix Canada, then we should move on to the UK or so, where there was one site that qualified as hate speech for advocacy against Blair.
I don't think what China does is good, I just question singling out China. And there are many countries where you actually might make a difference.
Besides slashdot users where by far in favor of sensoring stuff if it endangered people's safety, like when death threats were made by muslims about wilder's film. That was in the UK.
Let's start there. Then, AFTER that, and all other European countries and after Canada, then we can move Canada. What point is there in saying as a non-free country to China that they should be free ?
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http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/dec/07121902.html [lifesitenews.com]
If he gets convicted, what difference will the absense of ISP filters make ?
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Perhaps one that doesn't include statements like this: in a country with Sunday shopping, abortion rights and same-sex marriage...[h]uman rights commissions are vestigial organs, a historical correction that no longer serves any useful function. in attempts to prove a point. I mean, to say that just because women have the right to reproductive freedom (if they live in a major city), gay people can get married and everyone can go shopping
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This saves the ISPs effort - they don't have to bother, because threats of legal action will scare people into silence.
I don't know the facts - just clarifying his argument.
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I'm not saying that it's r
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But to say that a human rights commission isn't needed at all because we can go shopping on days when Christians traditionally took the day off work is ludicrous.
Don't disagree... Would be interested in seeing how the HRC handles issues of free speech. I really appreciate the freedom I have to agree or disagree with the government and current public opinion.
I'm not saying that it's right for people to be censored because they offend people, but there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of human rights here (and elsewhere).
Absolutely. Though human rights are by nature a limited resource - if you give one human too many rights it impedes on the rights of another.
I would also contend that, based on the sorts of websites I can access and the sort of bigotry I can find that isn't censored, the human rights commission is extremely ineffective at silencing the sorts of people who would make negative statements about minority groups online. The grandparent post didn't provide what I would consider a particularly reliable website for information so I don't really know if the issue is just censorship or if there's something else to it (i.e. if the author is attempting to incite violence against a group, should they still be allowed to do so even if it's just talking?).
This isn't about right-wing compartmentalized websites... if you are only allowed to speak freely if you are a small time website, isn't that marginalization?
I should
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There is more going on than this. If every heap of cells that satisfies the definition "human" is to have equal rights then
-> no abortion (obviously) I don't think anyone would seriously advocate ending one life to increase the comfort of another
-> only sex within marriage (since a pregnancy cannot be terminated, and if a child is born it has "a right" to 2 pa
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Hmm...
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Otoh
I know that for progressives it's hard to imagine that not every progressive has the same opinion, but this guy is "progressive" (or let's say he has the backing of "progressives", he does not be
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It's available in five parts on YouTube. Here's part one: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ApcnpFCYd7E [youtube.com]
I found it extremely interesting and I recommend it as a must-watch for Canadians everywhere.
I
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Re:Firewall tech (Score:4, Informative)
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Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Questioning and opposing their Government?
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Only terrorists question or oppose their government! Are you a terrorist?
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I'm glad China is there to ensure nothing like that happens.
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errrmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the USA starts filtering my access to the BBC, I don't really know why they even brought that up -- its just like workplace filtering at any other job.
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Re:errrmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd argue that all a soldier really needs in order to communicate with loved ones is email, but they're getting a lot more access than that.
Oh, they're so repressed!
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What???!!! They blocked our soldiers access to pr0n!!! Oh, my dear God, now it is time for a revolution! What they gonna do next? Take our right to watch
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Now yes, if it's not being used properly, sure, but the article has a damn good point about that.
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We would rather concern about the turtle speed of "broadband" internet provided by ISPs. Construction of cyber infrastructure has a long way to go in China.
Silver lining... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an illustration of the slippery slope and we all should show this to anyone who wants to censor or regulate the internet for obscene material or to "protect the children".
As a matter of fact, here's a perfect illustration how the "think of the children" rhetoric can be and is used for oppression of a people.
Re:Silver lining... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Silver lining... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Silver lining... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a bit amazed at how hesitant a lot of Chinese guys I know are to say anything remotely negative about the Chinese government and get really upset if you insinuate that its not all fluffy bunnies and flowers with the government. But then again I'm used to pretty much everyone complaining about my government.
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Re:Silver lining... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like how America is still looked upon favorably in parts of Eastern Europe, like Georgia. When you've experienced REAL dictatorship, REAL secret police, and REAL oppression, then you look at things differently than does the college kid who had his feelings hurt, so he blames it on whatever boogyman is popular to blame.
When you've spent your entire life wondering where little billy went after he said "i think mao sucked," you're going to be warry of saying those things and probably go out of your way to make sure that anyone else who heard it knows YOU didn't endorse that statement so that nothing happens to YOU.
We may be run by a bunch of retards and jackasses, but no matter how bad we have it, we still have it a lot better than the majority of people in the world.
Just something to think about.
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Thanks,
DHS
Re:Silver lining... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that isn't a joke either. I really do.
But the government also isn't rounding up Americans off American streets and sending them to secret prisons (if they are, they're doing a good job keeping it secret).
They're rounding up foreigners that they get in foreign countries, who are (allegedly) in the act of doing stuff.
FDR made up the whole "enemy combatant" thing, lest we forget. And most of the interned Japanese were citziens or legal residents. I have yet to see DHS going around picking up taxi drivers and 711 clerks on suspicion of aiding and abetting the enemy.
I don't like Bush either, but can we please at least keep the accusations to things that he's actually done?
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Not saying that's necessarily the case in any particular context, but any immigrant community is going to carry ove
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Re:Silver lining... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Silver lining... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not just Slashot users, but Chinese in general. I watched a news program or documentary recently that covered the subject, and it turns out the Chinese, the young and college educated particularly, exhibit the same reaction.
It turns out that, and I'm generalising here, the Chinese, if they don't "like it that way". have few objections to strong government control. For a westerner that might be hard to fathom, but I think it's unfair to dismiss their preferences as absurd or characterise them as the result of some sort of brainwashing.
What shouldn't be hard to fathom is that for someone who's Chinese, China is their country. Last I checked, national pride is a universal phenomenon, and treading on other's sense of identity or pride, however enlightened or well-intentioned, is always bad form and inevitably leads to conflict.
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I don't see why we should hold back on criticizing a country that is n
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Not that it wasn't informative. Maybe there are many who share their view. One interesting thing the students said was that non-Chinese people don't appreciate how much change the Chinese government *has* allowed, how much different it is now than it was. While I hope that's true, I'd counter that the Chinese government hasn't c
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Prior to the 20th century, China was ruled by emperors. They were autocratic and restrictive. Progress in China had essentially halted for hundreds of years, and the place was being overrun by Europeans.
In the early 20th century, the emperors were finally overthrown and China's government changed to a republic. This government was brutal and ineffectual, and the situation quickly degenerated into civil war.
Not too long after this, the Japanese saw
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Au contrare. By and large, they love America and all things American. KFC, Pizza Hut, Nestle Ice Cream, etc., have been exploding around the nation for the last decade, and if you travel to China as an American (on your own... tour groups are a different story) you'll have women c
nationalism is not an american invention (Score:3, Interesting)
the americans that engage in nationalist chest thumping of course deserved to be spoken out against, but most importantly on this point, in the usa, according to law, you can actually speak out against them
whereas in china, or cuba, or turkey, and other countries, to criticize your country or your gove
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Re:FSM (Score:2)
Hell with them... (Score:4, Insightful)
Protect them?
PROTECT THEM???
From WHAT??? Other than finding out what a murderous bunch of thugs run their craptastic fascist gov't?
RS
Re:Hell with them... (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't want people reading how all their peasants are moving to cities into sweat shops, they don't want there people to ahve a tool to use to organize rallys. The last thing they need is another tank man;which most people under 20 in China have never even heard of.
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From WHAT???
Deal w/ it every day (Score:3, Interesting)
The truth is the Chinese govt. faces a very real terrorism threat w/ the upcoming Olympics and are doing everything including monitoring the Net to keep it from happening.
Re:Deal w/ it every day (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's understandable from a policy level but they have been throttling the hell out of their trans-Pacific connections. Our team over there was getting 36kbs downloads from a (flaky GoDaddy client) connection the other day.
The truth is the Chinese govt. faces a very real terrorism threat w/ the upcoming Olympics and are doing everything including monitoring the Net to keep it from happening.
I'm sorry, but this doesn't hold water. They do this daily, and have for years. It's not about protecting their citizens or infrastructure from terrorist threats, it's about protecting their privileged status and controlling their populace.
Hm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Article w/o ads or extra clickity (Score:3, Informative)
Blogs (Score:5, Informative)
In retrospect, blocking blogs isn't such a bad idea...
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Due to certain disgraceful actions on the part of main-stream journalists in the past, and due to perceived bias or partisanship by at least half of the population towards a source, a lot of people are looking towards "unfiltered" "sources" of "information," because they mistakenly
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CNN for instance is pushing their "iReports" where people can submit stories. Then of course, Huffington Post frequently shows up on all sorts of cable news pundit shows. (Like Harry Shearer really has any insights.)
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I had a hard time accessing:
- Some blogs as well
- Some earthquake news in the days immediately following the event (Some was accessible, some not)
- Some other misc news sites would not load. (Google world news page was out on me for days, while most other google news and google sites worked fine)
FWIW I think the blocking is mostly keyword based.
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I tried pulling up some Wikipedia pages that I thought might be blocked: Falun Gong, Dalai Lama, etc. and all seemed to work fine, with full history of the page and all 'subversive' content easily readible.
Re:Blogs (Score:5, Interesting)
My television received NHK, TV Monde, and CNN International. Once during a CNNi story about the protests in Tibet did the cable cut out. I have heard of the government doing that, but the images were later shown on CCTV, but of course the accompanying commentary would very likely be different.
Wikipedia was accessible, except for certain pages. Google.com was accessible, but if you googled a certain phrases, the connection would be reset, and you couldn't access google for a few seconds.
Domains like tibet.com simply wouldn't resolve.
Seemed like every Taiwanese forum/blog was blocked.
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When I was in Beijing, I met a few college students, and they were well aware of how censored the Internet was in China. They seemed to find it more annoying than anything, but at the same time mostly a nonissue since most of the sites they visit are Chinese. I forgot to ask if they ever used Tor to access some of the forbidden sites.
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I believe so as well. I can confirm that when I visited Beijing in the Eastern last year, neither wikipedia, bbc nor amnesty was accessible.
How it works. (Score:4, Informative)
Terrible (Score:3, Informative)
"Use a VPN or proxy if you want to use the internet without fear or restriction."
I was hoping for more detailed information on the operational hardware involved in filtering a country, not confirmation it happens, which is already widely known.
Don't worry. (Score:1, Insightful)
The government cares about their 'face' and they aren't going to want to the rest of the world seeing what they do control. They'll just let those places have access and then after the Olympics, restrict it again.
blocked sites (Score:3, Informative)
Blogger
Blogspot
Flickr (only the photo serving subdomains)
Typepad
Wordpress
Formerly blocked, but now open:
Wikipedia
BBC News
As far as I'm aware, the blocks on the blog-related sites are domain or netblock level--not the result of keyword or content-level filtering.
Defend citizens (Score:5, Interesting)
lol (Score:1)
Foreigner Have It the Wrong Way Around (Score:4, Informative)
Westerners have to try to understand that the generation that's in it's mid-late 20's owe their standard of living and level income to the Communist Party, they and look to the party members for moral guidance. Propaganda, even on the "international" CCTV-9 has reached an all time high with wall to wall interview of people who have lost everything praising the work of the government.
When it comes to Internet censorship, it's largely a joke. Websites can be overcome with any number of web proxies, and even if you can't get to the porn that you want, you can go to the local computer markets in Zhongguancun or Chaoyangmen, where you'll be offered "DVD sex movies". The BBC had been unblocked, but blocks are still in place for servers on Flicker and on Livejournal and Blogspot.
The government here is rather sneaky. They don't say that they actively and specifically filter websites, rather, they ask ISPs to self-censor and these ISP's face heavy fines for allowing undesirable content through. This is the reason that websites that are accessbile in Shanghai aren't accessible in Beijing or other parts of China.
A good project to keep an eye on is Concept Doppler, which has a list of what keywords and phrases are filtered by the GFW. What is interesting is that of all the tests that CD team performed, a certain number of the phrases did managed to get through the filter, showing that the GFW doesn't filter everything all the time, but filters some most of the time, which creates the impression that everything is filtered, and, ultimately, keeps people scared.
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Look at people who are interested in politics in the US. They're not talking about what countries we like or hate. That's redneck talk. People who are truly interested in politics talk about personalitie,s about who they're going to vote for, about policies, whether a law will have the intended effect, what industries will be helped or hurt by an attempt at protectionism, strategies for blocking or passing legislation, etc. That's politics, and
Try China's Great Firewall by yourself (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.unix-center.net/uc/reg.php [unix-center.net]
sorry but the page is in Chinese only
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ssh pythonist@x4100.unix-center.net
passwd: slashdotting
pls don't change the passwd
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GFW reflects gap of generations in China (Score:3, Informative)
Almost all young Chinese, me included, think GFW is totally stupid and the people who are in charge of the blocking have pig brains. why?
1. CNN/BBS/FalunGong/TibetGIE should not be blocked since nobody in China reads them.
2. Some irrelevant websites such as sourceforge used to be blocked.
However, most of old pe
dear han ultranationalists: (Score:3, Insightful)
a true great man can take lots of criticism in stride. an immature powerless man meanwhile freaks out every time someone suggests the slightest negative thing about him. it shows a lack of confidence, an insecurity
han ultranationists: do you believe that china is a great power? if you do, then start acting as that great power status dictates: have more confidence. china will be criticized more and more every year since it is so powerful now. if you cannot handle that criticism, then you are in danger of destroying your own greatness with your own insecure behavior
to defeat the creation of insecure people in china, you should foster a healthy amount of internal dissent and self-critical thinking in china. if you do not, if you censor anything that remotely criticizes the chinese government or the chinese nation, then what you do is make the chinese people permanent children. you incubate chinese who are unable to handle criticism without freaking out in insecurity and a lack of confidence
and thereby diminishing the greatness of china
china is a great nation. i believe that as an american. so start acting like a great nation, and grow some thicker skin when foreigners criticize china. being criticized is a natural product of being powerful. get used to it. believe me, as an american, i know something about being criticized on the world stage! and mostly, i just shrug it off. you should to
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Another site to test the Firewall (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html
Wait a minute (Score:2)
... is it just me? (Score:2)
I, for some reason, keep thinking that I have seen this article title many, many times before.
Am I going crazy?